‘I just couldn’t stay,’ he had said. ‘I couldn’t do it any more.’
Couldn’t be a husband. Couldn’t be a father. Couldn’t.
It still stung.
‘That sounds like Dad,’ she agreed, because it was always easier to humour her mother. ‘Just check the hotel booking and text me the dates, so I can block those days out from work.’
‘The hotel booking?’ For a moment, her mother sounded completely lost, then she remembered. ‘Oh. Yes, of course. I see. Yes. It’s this wedding – it’s thrown me. My mind is tied up in knots.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Mum.’
Pepper stared unseeingly at the blur of mopeds and stumbling tourists, unaware of the sun on her bare limbs, and the strutting dance of the pigeons as they picked at paving stones beneath her feet.
‘It will be fine,’ she soothed. ‘We’ll dress up nicely, hold our heads up high and act like we’re happy for them, even if we’re not. We’ll smile, eat their food, drink their champagne, then we’ll come home again.’
‘It’s not your father’s fault,’ her mother said then, her inner pendulum swinging from affection to loyalty. ‘He deserves to be happy.’
‘So do you,’ Pepper reminded her, but she could already sense a rebuttal.
‘You say that,’ her mum said with a sigh, ‘but it’s an empty platitude, Philippa.’
Pepper understood it, of course; knew that the absence of Bethan meant an absence of happiness for her mother. As she sat there, her phone pressing her ear against the side of her head, Pepper found herself assailed by the same guilt she always experienced whenever she saw or spoke to her mother. Guilt that her own pain did not run deep enough, that she dared to hope for elation in the wake of tragedy.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she whispered, standing up to pace in a circle. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I just worry about you, that’s all.’
‘I know you do.’ Her mother sounded almost sleepy. ‘I know you do.’
Her nose stinging now with unshed tears, Pepper said a hurried goodbye, then jabbed at her phone to end the call.
This was it – this was what it would always be like with her mother. The pattern of their relationship would keep repeating, just like the designs on all this city’s azulejos. The same picture, over and over. The same outcome, forever inevitable.
Chapter 15
‘Fabulous, isn’t it?’
Josephine had to fold up the rim of her UFO hat in order to admire the curved stone arches of the Convento do Carmo – a grand yet ruinous cathedral nestled in the heart of the city.
‘Very,’ agreed Pepper, who was still feeling bruised after her phone call.
‘I can remember being here with Jorge as if it were yesterday. It hasn’t changed a dot. Do you know, part of the original structure collapsed during an earthquake in 1755, but instead of attempting to rebuild her, the Portuguese simply chose to nurture what remained. I think she’s rather beautiful, in an eerie way. Jorge brought me here because he wanted to paint me, but I never had the patience to sit for him. Now, of course, I wish I had.’
Pepper found it strange to walk through a nave that was open to the elements, the cracked stone pillars bleached pale gold by a sun they were never meant to see. She avoided churches at home because she always felt as if silent condemnation was emanating from every pew and flickering candle. It did not feel the same here, though, with the sky so blue above them and the breeze so warm. There were no echoes of death here, no corners shrouded in darkness, or whispering voices.
‘Do you want to go inside?’ Pepper asked. As well as being a church, the Convento do Carmo site also had an adjoining archaeology museum.
Josephine pulled a face. ‘Not especially. I always find looking at old artefacts a bit depressing. They remind me of how fusty I am.’
‘Oh my God, woman!’ exploded Pepper. ‘You are ridiculous.’
‘Ravenous is what I am,’ she replied, offering Pepper the crook of her elbow. ‘And as luck would have it, the next place I want to see has the added benefit of pastel de nata by the barrowload.’
‘Pastel de who?’
Josephine tittered. ‘Nata. Utterly divine and exceedingly delicious custard tarts. You must have seen them – they’re in the front window of every other bakery we walk past.’
‘Oh, those!’
‘So, what do you say?’ she enthused. ‘Shall we go to Belém and see how many we can eat before we’re sick?’
Pepper estimated that walking the five kilometres along the river to Belém would take them at least an hour, and was therefore out of the question for Josephine, whose fall on the beach she had not forgotten. Instead of flagging down a taxi, however, she suggested they took the bus, only to find it packed to the doors with passengers. A young mum near the front offered a seat to Josephine, while Pepper stood towards the back, wedged in between two elderly women in long, black dresses and a group of rowdy teenage boys.
Hoping to find a message from Finn when she took out her phone, Pepper was disheartened to be greeted by a blank screen.
I like him, she thought. Being within his orbit yesterday had felt to Pepper as if she was inside a happy bubble. Life had been better for those few hours; Finn had rubbed away the dullness that had settled over her former shine.
Chewing at a curl of skin on her thumb, she used the other to tap out a rapid message to him, pressing ‘send’ before she had a chance to reconsider. The bus trundled from one stop to the next, groaning under the weight of its human cargo, and all the while Pepper clung to the pole, trying her best not to bash into people whilst also keeping track of how far they had come.
Her phone pinged.
‘Hallo,’ Finn had written, followed by an emoji of a waving hand. There was a pause, then another message came through. Pepper had asked him what he was up to, and now she let out a squeak of pleasure. The universe wasn’t just listening, it was doing.
Finn was sitting on the bus stop bench when she and Josephine arrived, and smiled when they came into view. Getting to his feet, he strode smoothly across to greet them.
‘You look nice,’ he said, looking Pepper up and down. ‘Like a raspberry ripple ice cream.’
Josephine nodded in enthusiastic agreement, eyeing Finn like a cat might a goldfish bowl.
‘And you look lovely, too,’ Finn added, running an appraising eye over Josephine’s green trousers and pale yellow blouse. ‘The colours of a summer meadow.’
‘I remember rolling around in those, once upon a time,’ she chuckled, and a mortified Pepper covered her face with her hands.
‘I would not suggest that you do the same here,’ Finn replied. ‘Not in front of so many people.’
Josephine thought this was hilarious and waggled a mock-offended finger at him as she complimented his crisp white shirt with its polo player embroidered on the breast pocket.
‘How wonderful that you two young things keep bumping into each other,’ Josephine said now. ‘I warned Pepper that this city has a history of bringing people together.’
‘Perhaps the stars want us to know one other,’ he agreed, beaming at both of them without a trace of humour or irony. Pepper could not imagine any of the men down at the Turbot having the gumption to talk like this.